


Mock-Apple and Synthamon

by emyn ab morlan (gwenynnefydd)



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fondling, M/M, Scent Kink, Scents & Smells, Transgender Felix Millstone, brief mention of gender dysphoria, i found some new gays and i wanted to play, look there is no plot here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenynnefydd/pseuds/emyn%20ab%20morlan
Summary: Felix takes a bath. Max is very appreciative.
Relationships: Maximillian DeSoto/Felix Millstone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Mock-Apple and Synthamon

**Author's Note:**

> hello this game made me 72.9% more gay, and i now have many ships

“Felix! Hey, Felix!”

The Unreliable was quiet, in the way it normally was at the end of a long day. Vicar Max was reading somewhere, probably. Nyoka was asleep, as was the Cap - a long day of hunting a Mantiqueen across Monarch had wiped the both of them out. SAM was clearing up the mess, and Ellie was lying in her room, engrossed in the latest holodrama, “decompressing” as she put it. Felix supposed seeing the number of injuries on Nyoka and the Cap, he’d want some time to himself too. And Parvati… apparently Parvati was still awake and was waving him over as he passed by the engine room.

“Working late, Parv?” he asked, leaning against the bulwark. 

“Well, kinda.” she replied, smiling a little. If Parvati wasn’t so obviously batting for another tossball team, Felix might’ve been charmed. “I mean, yeah I was tinkering around in the innards- you never know when I can check on things, not with the Cap needing a fast getaway sometimes- but that’s not why I called you over!”

“I hope not - you know I’ve no head for engineering.”

“I’m sure you’re not _so_ bad. But, look-” Parvati turned to something on her left - a battered old canvas bag, Felix noted - and began rummaging, her brown freckled hands hunting through the contents until she found a small package, which she held aloft with a cry of triumph.

“Here we go!” With much more enthusiasm than was required, she thrust the package into Felix’s hands. It was, Felix realised as he turned it over, a bathing kit - soap, for both body and hair, a scrubby brush, bubble bath, body lotion and a rubber ducky, all nestled in a lime green flannel. The card covering proudly declared _Auntie Cleo’s Bubble Blossom_ _\- A New You In 20 Minutes!_ He raised the box to his nose and sniffed - mock-apples, he could tell, but something else too, spicy and warm.

“Er…” Felix finally said, because he wasn’t exactly certain how he _was_ supposed to respond. “Is this… a hint?”

“A hint?” Parvati’s brow furrowed, before her expressioned widened into horror at what she may or may not have implied. “Oh! No! No, no, nonono, _no._ I didn’t mean it like _that-_ I mean, you smell just like the rest of us- not that I go around smelling you all- sorry, sorry! It’s just- well, I had spares, and I thought you might like a set.”

“Spares?”

“Yeah.” Parvati’s face was red with embarrassment. “The Captain took me to Groundbreaker to buy some stuff for my dinner with Junlei, except neither of us could decide which scent we liked, so we bought… all of them.”

Distantly, Felix remembered that old man the Cap often spoke to referring to them all as ‘disaster space gays’. He could perhaps understand the sentiment now.

“Anyways, I _finally_ managed to pick one I liked. I offered the others around, but Nyoka and Ellie don’t use them, and Vicar Max has his own kit. The Cap took the _Rose-ish_ one on account of the Mantiqueen xe met, and I have _Refurbished Ship_ for my dinner, so I thought… well, you’re the only one I hadn’t asked.”

Felix looked down at the box in his hand. He had a… complicated relationship with these things. When he was a kid, before he became the self-made man he was meant to be, the others in the Back Bay would sneak him floral bath kits, girly things to match the girl they saw him as. Even now, he tended only to take militantly sparse showers, and only when forced to by Max (or another member of the crew, but mainly Max), on account of his body that he still hadn't saved the bits to change. But Parvati was nice, and she _couldn’t_ have known about him, about who he had been, and despite his spiky demeanour, he didn’t like it when Parvati got that disappointed look when she was rebuffed.

“Thanks, Parv,” Felix smiled, stuffing the old ache of dysphoria back into the depths of his mind. “You’ll be sure I’ll put this to good use.”

BREAK

As was his habit, Felix placed the box of bath things under his bed and promptly forgot about it for the next two weeks. It was only when, after a raucous night of drinking games, Felix found himself awoken by a blast from SAM’s _Super Sud Soaker 2000_ (“Leave this stubborn stain to SAM!”) that he realised perhaps it was time for a bath. Wiping the suds off his face, Felix stumbled through the kitchen, box in hand and nursing one heck of a hangover, giving only a grunt of good morning to Max and his morning coffee at the table. Thankfully, the one bathroom on the _Unreliable_ was unoccupied, and Felix gratefully slipped in, and pushed the lock shut.

It was perhaps a testament to how grotty he felt that his dysphoria did not raise its ugly head too much as he stripped down and ran the bath. The bubble bath provided by Auntie Cleo filled the bath with a milky green colour and shiny bubbles, and Felix wondered briefly if it may be slightly toxic, and then decided he was in the firing line of several toxic things a day, and perhaps a bath would be the least toxic of them all. Besides, the opaque water hid the parts of his body that he didn’t particularly like to see, and the scented bubbles that almost burnt his nose from intensity distracted him enough to not think about anything else.

Plus the rubber ducky was _really_ fun to play with.

He was perhaps uncertain exactly how much time he had spent in the bath, but as he pulled his head out from under the water, he became aware of an angry rapping on the door.

“For the love of _fuck_ \- does no-one understand that there is _one fucking bathroom_ on this ship?!” Nyoka’s voice was immediately recognizable through the door. “Who is it this time? Is it you, Cap?”

“Sorry Nyoka,” Felix called out, sitting up in the bath. “I’ll be out soon!”

“Felix-?” There was a beat, and then Nyoka said. “Max, have you corrupted him?!”

“I certainly have not-!” Max’s voice was choked, and Felix could almost imagine him spitting out his coffee.

“He used to be quick in there! _Military,_ almost. Now ever since you both have been in each other’s dorms, he’s spending almost as long as you do in there.”

“Perhaps he has come to recognise the merits of a long bath.”

“Maybe he should forget those merits again.” There was another bang on the door. “Millstone! Out!”

“Alright, alright…” With a sigh, Felix hauled himself up and out of the bath. He dried himself off, but on finishing he realised his binder and his other clothes were kind of grim from last night’s booze fest, and feeling as soft and as clean as he did, he didn’t particularly feel like putting them back on. Instead, he nabbed a robe that hung on the back of the door - _Max’s_ , judging by the scent - and wore that instead, bundling his own clothes into the laundry bin for SAM to handle later. Nyoka swept past him almost as soon as the lock was slid open, a friendly hip bump her only greeting, and Felix made his way down to the kitchen.

Max was still sat at the table nursing a cup of black coffee, greying hair and vestments as perfect and as tidy as ever, reading the latest tossball scores in the newsletter. A second cup of coffee sat next to him, prepared exactly as Felix preferred it, creamer and NearMaple syrup, and Felix honed in on it like a man dying of thirst. Max could be thoughtful on occasion, even if he did have terrible taste in tossball teams.

“Max, I take back anything bad I said about the Hammers,” Felix slid into the seat next to the older man, and reached out for the coffee. There were other things too - toasted Bred, something that could be passed off as purpleberry jam - but the coffee was the most important thing on the table right now for Felix’s hungover mind. He could feel Max’s gaze on him as he practically inhaled the brew.

“You’re wearing my robe.” he said, and Felix almost snorted coffee through his nose at the inaneness of the comment.

“I’ll put it back.” Felix managed to say between gulps of coffee. But Max didn’t bicker with him on that point, not like he usually did, and after reaching the dregs at the bottom of the cup, Felix chanced another glance at his older lover. Max was staring at him, brows slightly knit together, gaze intense, as if he was trying to figure out a particularly tough riddle.

“Something up, Vic?” Felix asked, and Max twitched a little, as if coming back to himself.

“You smell different.” he said blankly, and Felix really did laugh this time.

“Oh yeah! Parvati had some spare bath stuff she gave me. I thought I might as well use it. It’s good - smells real nice, and I feel softer than a cystypig’s ass- look, feel-”

He reached out and took Max’s hand, and Max’s gaze fell to his hand. His expression widened into awe, and he dropped his paper to use both hands to explore the soft skin of his hands and his arms. Max’s touch always felt like an electric shock, and Felix hummed as his partner’s hands and fingers smoothed up his arm. Max smiled, warm and somewhat enticing, and Felix could almost sense the cogs in his head lining up and figuring out what he could do with this new information.

“Come here.” Max said, almost gently, and Felix suddenly found himself being pulled into Max’s lap. Felix would swear blind that he did not squeak when Max did this, but there was a sound that made Max’s smile broaden as he repositioned Felix to sit astride him. There was a pause, as Felix tried to figure out where this was going, but Max took the reins as usual, easily crushing Felix to him so that he could bury his face in the crook of his neck. He inhaled, sighed, and then Felix felt Max’s hands slip under the robe and down, down, _down_ to cup his asscheeks, softly rubbing them.”

“Your ass is soft too.” Max murmured, and Felix giggled.

“I won’t be soft for too long if you keep feeling me up.” Felix responded, wriggling a little in Max’s lap. “Nyoka’s going to kill us if she finds us like this in the kitchen like this again.”

“Mmm.” Max seemed disinclined to move, content to be inhaling this new scent and feeling Felix’s soft, pert ass. But even Max couldn’t ignore the shutting off of the shower water, and with a sigh, he pulled back a little to press a gentle kiss to Felix’s jaw. 

“Let’s not traumatise Miss Nyoka further,” Max said, with a rather salacious smile, and he easily lifted Felix up to carry him. Giggling, Felix tightened his grip, and happily let Max carry him to their shared bunk for further exploration.


End file.
